MONLAU COMPETICION SEAT WINS HANKOOK 24H AT MISANO

The MONLAU COMPETICION SEAT LCR TCR V3 DSG (#107, Jurgen Smet/Jose Manuel Perez Aicart/Alba Cano Ramirez/Jaime Font Casas) has won the Hankook 24H MISANO. After 738 laps on the 4.226 kilometre Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, equalling a 3,118.78 kilometre distance, Jose Manuel Perez Aicart crossed the finish line to secure the team's second outright victory in the third round of the 2017 24H TOURING CAR ENDURANCE SERIES powered by Hankook. 13 laps behind the winners, the Wimmer Werk Motorsport SEAT LCR TCR V3 DSG (#266, Felix Wimmer/Matthias Kaiser/Martin Gasser/Peter Gross) took home second place after a consistent race. These two TCR class finally held the upper hand in the tough battle against the SP3-GT4 teams. The SP3-GT4 entered Semspeed Peugeot 308 Racing Cup (#226, Anthony Lambert/Pierre Dupont/François Semoulin/Benoît Semoulin) finished in third place overall and thereby won the class.

The polesetters, the CWS Ginetta G55 GT4 (#178, Colin White/JT Coupal/Nick Adcock/Patrik Mathiesen), became second in the SP3-GT4 rankings with position five overall. Despite a 248 lap margin after a long pit stop, the Team Africa Le Mans Ginetta G55 GT4 (#555, Emanuele Pirro/Sarel van der Merwe/Jan Lammers/Greg Mills/Graham Vos) still went into third place in class.

From the last position on the grid, the championship leading QSR Racingschool BMW M235i Racing Cup (#154, Jimmy de Breucker/Mario Timmers/Rodrigue Gillion/Bart van Haeren) moved up into sixth spot. Being the only CUP1 entrant, the Belgian team automatically won the class. Their third outright victory earns them another decent amount of points for the championship battle.

With the inaugural Hankook 24H MISANO in the books, Peter Freij from Creventic looks ahead to the two remaining rounds of the 2017 24H TOURING CAR ENDURANCE SERIES powered by Hankook: "The 24H TCES powered by Hankook will stick to its schedule for the rest of the season and will continue next year. Creventic were the first to launch an endurance series for touring cars, which made us vulnerable. We have no doubt that running the events despite their small grids is the right thing to do in order to earn trust and to offer calculability to the teams. Besides SEAT, BMW, Ginetta, Audi and Peugeot, Hyundai came to Misano with a test car and plan to join more events. We are happy to see that the brands believe in the platform. So do we. We already have a great mix of drivers, teams, and cars. But the big show still needs to come. We expect more than 50 cars for Barcelona and a full grid for Spa-Francorchamps."

More information can be found on the series’ website www.24htceseries.com.